Uber Is Fighting A Battle In Brazil

Rio de Janeiro’s Mayor Eduardo Paes signed a bill yesterday banning Uber in the host city of the 2016 Olympics, and São Paulo is also on the verge of banning the service for operating as an unregulated transportation service.

Uber has over 5,000 drivers and 500,000 users since launching in Brazil a year ago, and aggression by politicians and taxi drivers alike has been mounting in lockstep with its growth.

It’s a battle Uber has been fighting on a city-by-city basis across the world, and winning almost everywhere, with recent victories in New York City and Las Vegas. But, like France, where drivers accused Uber of “economic terrorism,” taxi drivers in Brazil have been pushing back with violence.

All four cities Uber currently operates in Brazil have registered taxi driver violence against Uber drivers. In capital city Brasilia, taxi drivers attacked a private driver they mistook for an Uber driver at the airport. In Belo Horizonte, several Uber drivers have reported being followed, threatened and attacked an by taxi drivers. Taxi drivers kidnapped and beat an Uber driver in São Paulo. The head of São Paulo’s taxi syndicate recently told council members, “Someone is going to die.”

In Rio, a crowd of several hundred taxi drivers protesting the service in Rio surrounded two Uber cars, called the police, who arrested the drivers and escorted the passengers to…. wait for it… taxis. At a bigger protest in July, the head of Rio’s taxi syndicate told the press, “We don’t want these pirates driving on the streets.”

While taxi drivers must pass through a battery of paperwork, courses, exams and fees to offer what is known as public individual transportation in Brazil, private individual transportation services don’t have specific regulations on the books. “This is very different from being illegal,”  Uber spokesperson Fabio Sabba says.

The path to regulation is playing out a bit differently in each city Uber operates in Brazil. According to Sabba, Belo Horizonte has set up a special commission to regulate Uber, and Brasilia’s mayor vetoed a bill to ban the service. In São Paulo, there are two bills on the table to regulate the service, plus one to ban it. And in Rio, the city council recently voted to fine “unregulated transportation services”, ie Uber, $600, and individual drivers $350 (about two months of minimum wage pay), for operating without a city license.

Rio’s tech-forward, TED-talking Mayor Eduardo Paes signed the bill into law today, after taking to Rio’s streets this week in a pro-taxi PR stunt, driving around a taxi followed by reporters and picking up random passengers. “I can’t drive Uber, it’s illegal,” he told O Globo.

“To please taxi owners, Mayor Paes sanctioned a completely unconstitutional law that is trying to ban technology from the city, leaving cariocas with less options to get around,” Uber responded. “We are now looking at appropriate legal measures. Uber believes that the service our partner drivers provides is completely legal and supported by federal law.”

Paes may be looking to get a piece of Uber’s action for himself. He recently said he would like to develop a rival technology for Rio’s taxi drivers, perhaps inspired by EasyTaxi, the leading transportation app in Brazil and the rest of Latin America (except for Mexico, where Uber is winning).

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